Genre
Young Adult Novel
Setting and Context
Written in the context of Alice’s life
Narrator and Point of View
Third-person narrative
Tone and Mood
Sad, disheartening, buoyant and hopeless
Protagonist and Antagonist
The protagonist is Alice McKinley.
Major Conflict
The main conflict is that Alice wants to befriend everyone in school, but fellow students in her new school instead bully her.
Climax
The climax comes when Alice proves to be wise despite being a young girl who manages to handle so many things at once. Alice does her things maturely and orderly despite not having a role model.
Foreshadowing
The lessons foreshadow Alice's mellowness and neatness she learns from her father's deteriorating love life and her brother's cluttered relationships.
Understatement
The death of a loved one is understated in the story. When Alice’s mother dies, her father’s love life fails miserably.
Allusions
The story alludes to Alice’s coming of age and maturing without a role model.
Imagery
Sight imagery is depicted when the narrator describes the blue-green eyes of Alice’s Art teacher (Miss Summers) in the new school.
Paradox
The main paradox is when Alice first sees the naked breasts of her fellow girls during gym lessons. Ironically, Alice did not know that all the girls her age were in their puberty stages in life.
Parallelism
N/A
Metonymy and Synecdoche
Nudity is used as a metonymy for a new stage in life.
Personification
N/A
